


Like a Whore

by onlytheshortones



Category: Veep
Genre: Backstory, Bi Dan Egan, Childhood, Dan/Words, Gen, Words
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-27
Updated: 2015-06-27
Packaged: 2018-04-04 18:20:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4148052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onlytheshortones/pseuds/onlytheshortones
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I must, like a whore, unpack my heart with words" (Hamlet, Act 2 Scene 2)</p><p>Dan x words, a love story in ten parts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like a Whore

**Author's Note:**

  * For [GoldStarGrl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GoldStarGrl/gifts).



> A fic for the lovely Halle's birthday!

I.

Your first word was “no.” Your second word was “yes.” Your parents like to say you had the full spectrum of human communication harnessed at thirteen months, but they’re wrong. It took you a few years to master “maybe,” but that’s where you live now. In the grey spaces between the “yes” and the “no,” the spaces that it takes more than one word to describe. Because one word is lazy. One word is stagnant. But mostly, one word is _solid_ , and you need to be fluid. Taking a side is dangerous; taking a side is impractical. It takes more than one word to stay off solid ground, to float somewhere in the waves.

You try to pretend you don’t get seasick.  

 

II.

Your thoughts don’t make sense until they’re in words, concrete words, so you keep a journal. You write down everything, and nothing, just thoughts. Some are important, some aren’t, but they don’t make sense until they’re in words, so you have to give them words.

_I think Lucy Wyatt has a crush on me, but I don’t think I like her back._

_Yesterday it was hard to breathe for a little while and I don’t know why._

Your journal comes with you everywhere you go, and you don’t think anything of it, but one day some kid, some stupid kid, Adam or Ethan or something, comes up to you and asks why you’re always writing in your gay little diary. It’s the first time you don’t have anything to say.

You go home and fill a page with retorts, ranging from high road bigger person to truly low. 

_Yeah, literacy is the true mark of homosexuality. Is that why you never learned to read?_

_Because none of you guys are hot enough to distract me._

_Did your boyfriend tell you that journals are gay?_

The next time someone calls you gay, you fire off that last one, and the guy’s friend makes that “oooh, burn” noise, and you run to the bathroom to throw up. You go home and rip out the page and tear it into tiny pieces and flush them down the toilet.

 _  
My heart was beating really fast earlier. I think there might be something wrong with me._  

  
You stop writing in your journal. You buy a Dictaphone and take notes out loud. You buy a laptop and take notes in word documents. You buy an iPhone and take notes in the Notes app and voice memos in the Voice Memo app. You change with the times. You seem normal. And you are. It’s not weird to need your thoughts in words. Words are tangible. That’s the beauty of them. 

 

III.

Writing _is better than talking,_ you think, _because in writing it’s only the words that matter._ But you can’t write everything, so you learn how to make spoken words hit just as hard. You read books meant for actors and learn about cadence and rhythm. You watch tape of all the great speakers you’ve learned about in school, you watch movies with iconic monologues, and you train your ear for what works. You memorize famous speeches, first Shakespeare, then political speeches. You practice them in your room at night and in the shower. You master emphasis and volume and learn how to get people to _want_ to hear what you’re saying. You do debate in high school, and you don’t lose. You could take the weakest case and still take down the opposition because you know how to _deliver_.

One day you realize that your looks aren’t going to fade anytime soon, and it’s back to the drawing board, watching the same movies you did before, watching new movies, reading about body language. You learn how to sit when you’re talking to a friend and how to sit when you’re flirting, and when to cross your arms, and when to adjust your tie. You learn to analyze peoples’ feelings for you, because to some, getting closer than normal will make them listen that much harder, and to some, it will distract them and they won’t hear what you’re saying at all.

Soon you’re the master, everyone listens when you speak, and all this is second nature to you. _Talking is better than writing,_ you think, _because in writing it’s only the words that matter._

 

IV.

You actually have a very clean mouth growing up, because you see your parents’ faces when your friends swear. You see your teachers’ faces, and adults in the streets, and getting taken seriously as a teenager is hard enough, but you need it to shake out in your favor, so you learn how to sound respectful.

In college, you lapse a little, but only in relaxed settings. You have two different personas, the casual Dan who drinks beer with his buddies and will drop a "fuck yeah" after a particularly nice round of darts, and the respectable Dan of the classroom, who punctuates his sentences with "sir" or "ma'am" and "please" and "thank you" and a half-smile you spent a few hours perfecting in the mirror—charming without being arrogant, attractive but dripping respect.

When you get to DC, and hear the way people speak, you learn that respectability is not a universally agreed upon code. It’s exhilarating, you think, a whole vocabulary you’ve had to avoid before that is suddenly open to you. You practice in the mirror, in the shower, three drinks in on a date with a girl you probably won’t see again. Soon, it flies off your tongue like you were born saying “get your fucking dick out of your ass and get me the goddamn numbers, motherfucker,” and this area is so fucking rich, you feel like a goddamn poet the way you spin profanity.

You scare people beneath you. Your insults are poison, and you take pleasure in watching people change and hurt, just from your words. Probably more pleasure than you should take, but it’s such a rush to see what you can do. Your words are your power. And you have power. So much fucking power.

 

V.

You are in charge of the press, promoted for the week's trip to Helsinki, and you have to apologize and the word “sorry” doesn’t sit well in your mouth. It never has. You crack a joke about how you didn’t apologize this much when you slept with Dave’s fiancée, and you get the reaction, because that’s what happens when you turn words. But then you have to remember sleeping with her, and you have to remember that “I’m sorry” didn’t do it then either, that you never quite spun the right words to get your brother to forgive you. And your patience is getting thin with the Finns, and your smile is cracking around the edges every time they call you “danteeksi” and you just want that British asshole to shut the fuck up. Every other word out of your mouth is “sorry” and you start to wonder if maybe your edges are wearing down, if maybe your way with words isn’t enough to get you where you want to go. _It got you this far_ , you remind yourself, but maybe this is the end of it, maybe your star is burning out.

You get home from Helsinki and get drunk on expensive scotch and recite the Saint Crispin’s Day speech in your bathroom mirror and you don’t fucking slur a single word.

You wake up on your bathroom floor and start the new day.

 _He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,_ _  
Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam’d._

VI.

Words give you power, but sex gives you control. It isn’t so much that you like it—more that you need it, because words need to be heard, and heard by the right people, and getting them to listen to you isn’t so easy as writing a speech.

The first time a woman tells you that you don’t put your feelings into words, you want to laugh in her face. Because you put everything into words. You just don’t say them to her, because they aren’t what she wants to hear, and that’s how you live—telling people what they want to hear. You’ve trained in innuendo, mastered sweet nothings, and getting them to want you is a breeze.

It’s the kisses that are hard, the touches, the unspoken things. You’re good at it all, of course you are, but your stomach never quite seems to settle into itself. Sex gives you control. You try to remember that as you trace letters on her skin with your tongue, as you mouth words between her legs, but you know that she doesn’t hear them, and there’s no good in words that nobody listens to.

VII.

You are campaign manager and you’re in London and British accents will be the fucking death of you, and if one more person cracks a “daniwah” joke you will cut somebody’s throat. You wonder what cruel joke it is that every fucking country in Europe seems to have a running joke that just so happens to include your name.

Mike’s writing a speech that’s beautiful, and words aren’t meant to just be beautiful, they’re meant to fucking _sell_ the story, and Mike got caught up in being a goddamn poet and you think you might kill him or faint, but you don’t have time to do either, so you just go. And she gives the speech and it goes fine and you can almost take a breath.

But then there’s her hat, and then there’s this fucking story about Ray, and you hired him, and you fucked up, and you tried so hard, and everything is going wrong, and then you’re on the floor and you don’t know what’s happening but you are fucking _livid_.

You’re in a hospital bed and Amy is there and Jonah is there and you don’t know who you want to thank and who you want to kill and then you’re alone in London with the words _panic attack_ flying around in your head like a fucking mosquito.

  
And you take the pills the doctor gave you, and suddenly there aren’t as many words to choose from. Your brain is on half-speed, and you can’t entirely dig into that impressive vocabulary you’ve been cultivating since middle school. But there’s the word _fine_. You say _I’m fine_ , you say _everything’s fine_ , and saying it makes it true, right? Words are your power, so you have this power over yourself. You’re fine.

 

VIII.

You dream you recite the Declaration of Independence, then the Gettysburg address, from a podium to a crowded room. Nobody can hear you. The crowd stirs, laughs, talks among themselves. You aren’t making a sound. Your words echo in your head, twice, three times, until you can’t hear precise sounds anymore, and then the marble hall is empty, and you are loud. Your words ring from the high ceiling, bounce off the walls, but they are no longer the somber words of the men who came before you. _Twas brillig and the slithy toves_ , you say, singsong, like your mother used to when you were a boy. You try to close your mouth, but you can’t— _did gyre and gimble in the wabe_. The crowd is back, and they are listening, and you aren’t saying anything of value anymore, and they’re laughing again, and you drop your papers and try to cover your mouth, but it keeps coming out of you. _All mimsy were the borogoves and the mome raths outgrabe._

You wake up in a cold sweat and shake your head, wondering why the hell you were the one giving the speech anyway.

 

IX.

When you’re nineteen and stupid, you get a tattoo, _take arms against a sea of troubles_ on your left lower ribs, and when you’re twenty, you fuck a member of the Ithaca Shakespeare Company, and when he takes your shirt off, he whispers “and by opposing end them” in your ear. You swear it’s the best sex you’ve ever had, reciting Shakespearian monologues back and forth the whole fucking time, and sure it’s right out of _Shakespeare in Love_ , and sure you’ll probably be embarrassed about it later, but God it’s so fucking good, sex and words together, his mouth against you so you can feel the words on your neck, head spinning and heart racing and _so fucking good_.

But the rest of the people you fuck in your life aren’t Shakespearian actors, and most of them laugh at your stupid tattoo, and you look into removal but that’s supposed to be painful, besides, if you’re seen getting a tattoo removed then it’s quick into the beltway gossip mill. The people you fuck are usually more discreet than that. Or just too ashamed to discuss it. Every new person who sees it is surprised, at least, and you’d rather a little mockery with your sex than have your stupid Shakespearian childhood mistake become common knowledge. And anyway, they’re not laughing once you get them going. 

And much as you wish you’d never gotten the damn thing, you still have some respect for your nineteen year-old self. Because you don’t know what the fuck Hamlet is whining about—it’s hardly a question whether _‘tis nobler in the mind_ to sit back and let the world fuck you over or to prepare yourself for battle. To be or not to be, your ass.

You face challenges head on, armed with your sharp wit and your arsenal of words, and the pen is mightier than the fucking sword.

 

X.

The problem is, there isn’t a reason you were fired. There was nothing you could have said to save yourself. Nothing. You have a voice memo on your phone saying so. _Nothing could have stopped this fucking train. Get out there and rally, you fine motherfucker._ You listen to it every morning your first week of unemployment. But you can’t rally.

The thing is, words can’t solve this problem. You weren’t fired for a reason, and any halfwit in DC knows that. There’s no excuse. There’s no explanation. You can’t dress up the story. You were the scapegoat, clean and simple. And you suddenly hate that word, _scapegoat_. You know its roots, biblical shit, the goat that was cast out into the desert for the Day of Atonement. Too goddamn poetic. To atone for the sins of the administration, Dan Egan is cast out into the vast desert of DC. Scapegoat. What a terrible fucking word.

You know there was nothing you could have said to save yourself. Logically, you know that. But nothing in your life has prepared you for a moment where words don’t help. You replay the conversation with Ben and Kent, over and over. You sit on the couch and blackmail them into keeping you, with harsher language and a stronger threat. It doesn’t work. You take your first shower in a week and beg them to keep you, with more charm and a few performative voice cracks. It doesn’t work. You go to the store at night for more beer and solve the problem of the data breach. And that works, except you don’t actually do it because even in your imagination there’s no fucking way to do that.

You just have to wait. Because words can’t solve this problem. Only time can. Your reputation has to recover.

You go a little insane. You prepare scripts for job interviews, one for lobbying, two for congressional staffer (separate scripts for Democrats and Republicans, because scapegoats can’t afford to be choosy, and anyway it’s not like you have your integrity to contend with), two for senate staffer. You even write some articles so you have a portfolio in case media is the only way to go. You’re Dan Egan, you can fucking do anything, after all. Lobbying is ideal, but you just have to wait and see who bites, because only time can solve this problem.

When you’ve done all that work, and it’s been three weeks and still no calls, you need something to do, so you plan for your relaunch. You spend a day coming up with catchy slogans, and fuck it, you get posters made, because Dan Egan bounces back, and you know you’ll need them soon enough.

And then there’s not much else to do and you pound beer on your couch and take your mother’s phone calls and call friends who you haven’t thought about in years, just for someone to talk to, because you need to get the words out, you need to say your ideas and plans to someone other than your empty living room.

And finally _finally_ Sidney Purcell calls you and you put on your best suit and you go in and he asks you for your pitch, and you sell yourself, and when he says “fired, don’t forget fired,” you shoot back “fired _up_ ” and you are back in your wheelhouse and the Egan has landed all right, you’re back on track, back where words are power. And so what if you’re not on a team anymore, and so what if you have no friends? You are ready to be the most powerful man in Washington DC, and if you have to whore yourself out, it’s not a big deal, because you don’t have morals to compromise anyway. You just have your words.


End file.
